Introduction to Tom Scott

Matt Traum 0:02

Welcome to the Aerophone Academy podcast with me, Matt Traum.

Alistair Parnell 0:06

And I'm Alistair Parnell. Join us each month as we discuss the wonderful world of wind controllers and you get the very best information and answers to your questions.

Matt Traum 0:17

The Aerophone Academy podcast is the source for accurate information on wind controllers, so make sure you subscribe to the podcast.

Alistair Parnell 0:26

And while you're at it, why not check out www. isax. academy?

Matt Traum 0:32

and patchman music. com.

Alistair Parnell 0:35

Welcome everybody to episode 13 of the Aerophone Academy podcast, and once again we've got a really exciting episode ahead for you. With this one, we'll introduce our regular co-host. I'm Alistair Parnell, coming to you from Nottingham in the UK, and let me introduce to you Matt Traum, coming from Ohio in the States, and Matt's got a very important introduction to make. Matt, how are you? Welcome. Take it away.

Matt Traum 1:08

Thanks, doing great here. Yeah, so this is super special. Ever since the beginning of this podcast, we've dreamt of having Mr Tom Scott as our special guest for the anniversary show. And we have him. Can you believe it? Brilliant. If you haven't heard of Tom Scott, you've certainly heard Tom Scott. I'll give you a bio here, so go get a coffee. It's going to take a minute or two.

Matt Traum 1:31

Tom's. He's a legendary composer, arranger, producer, music director, saxophonist, wind controller player and pioneer and educator. His 33 solo recordings have earned him 13 Grammy nominations and three Grammy awards. In the late 60s, Tom began working as a session musician, eventually becoming one of the top session musicians of all time. His career as a guest artist spans more than 2,000 recordings by such diverse artists as Barbra Streisand, Steely Dan, Quincy Jones, The lonius Monk, Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin and Aerosmith, and on and on. He's appeared on records by the Beach Boys, Blondie, Boz Skaggs. He played the flute on the low down track. Everybody knows that part. Grateful Dead, George Harrison, Whitney Houston- played the sax solo on Saving All My Love for You. Paul McCartney- he played the soprano sax solo on Listen To What the Man Said. All these major big hits. Joni Mitchell, Toto's Rosanna, Olivia Newton-John, Pink Floyd, Steppenwolf, Rod Stewart and on and on and on.

Matt Traum 2:37

In the late 70s, Tom introduced the listening public to the sound of the new electronic wind synthesizer, an instrument called the Lyricon, having played it on many well-known pop songs of the time, such as Steely Dan's 1977 classic hit, Peg, and later on their Gaucho album, Dan Fogelberg's Heart Hotels and Captain and Tennille 1979 hit, Do That To Me One More Time. And Michael Jackson's Billie Jean in 1983, super mega big hit.

Matt Traum 3:05

Tom has played on countless movie soundtracks, including Taxi Driver, The Jerk, Three Days of the Condor, Heaven Can Wait, Sea of Love, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc and the latest release of A Star is Born. He has numerous film and television scoring credits also, including composing and conducting the score for the movie Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Tom wrote the themes for the television shows Family Ties and Starsky and Hutch and has composed background scores for shows such as Baretta, Canon, Barnaby Jones, Streets of San Francisco and on and on.

Matt Traum 3:40

He was a founding member of the Blues Brothers and led the popular jazz fusion group LA Express. He's served as a musical director for the Academy Awards, nine Emmy Awards telecasts, the People's Choice Awards, Comic Relief, the Carol Burnett Show, the Pat Sajak Show, the Chevy Chase Show, Joni Mitchell, George Harrison, Olivia Newton-John with whom he was the music director, I believe, for her Physical tour playing to over half a million people and, of course, the GRP All-Star Big Band, among others.

Matt Traum 4:12

Now, personally, I never get tired of listening to Tom's magical and inspiring horn arrangements on the 1977 Steely Dan masterpiece album Aja, and he wrote the horn arrangements on that album for Black Cow, Deacon Blues, and Josie. To me, Tom's horn arranging on that classic album is a master class in how to arrange for pop horns. It just doesn't get any better than that. So, with all that said, it is my absolute honor to welcome Mr Tom Scott to the Aerophone Academy podcast. Welcome, Tom

Tom Scott 4:43

Well, thank you, Matt.

Matt Traum 4:44

hank exhausted from the intro yeah, I spent about three hours taking things out of that intro yesterday- I was not looking for things. I was looking for things to take out. What a career you've had by the way.

Tom Scott 4:57

I would like to point out one kind of oddity, which is that that number 2000, 2,000, right, recordings. That comes from a website called allmusic. com which keeps track of far more than I ever did, but they're pretty accurate that way. But here's the rub. It actually says 2,300 and something. I think now, and here's the thing. There's two things. One thing there was a harmonica player called Tommy Scott. He's in there somewhere. Um, there there could be other people. But but here's the other thing. If let's say, as you said, I played on, uh, Listen to What the Man Said, okay, on the original Venus and Mars record, okay, if that comes out as a the best of Paul McCartney and Wings, is that one performance or two? They're counting it as two. So I figure 2,300. Okay, take out all of that, probably somewhere around 2,000 actual recordings. That's still I'll never know for sure.

Matt Traum 5:58

That's still incredible. I think that'll still work. We'll keep you on the show.

Tom Scott 6:04

Okay, that's qualified Okay.

Alistair Parnell 6:05

Two thousand's a good number. You qualify. So, Tom, obviously, coming from a kind of wind synth point of view, we're going to concentrate on that side of things, mainly for this podcast, but I think everyone would be quite interested in just a little bit of your beginnings in musical adventure. You had a musical father, I think. Is that right?

Tom Scott 6:40

Absolutely, and mother for that matter. But my father was in the 40s, early 40s, during World War II. He was a music director at NBC Radio on Sunset and Vine. That's where he met my mother and I have a picture of him sitting at the piano accompanying Bing Crosby. Actually, wow, yeah. So once the 50s came around I was born in '48, and the 50s came along and my dad became a staff writer at Republic Pictures for a while, which he used to call Repulsive Pictures. It was a lot of, but it was, I'm sure. I'm sure he said this at one point it was a great training ground for him because he orchestrated. He actually orchestrated for Aaron Copland Wow, he said that was one of the thrills of his life. But he composed for you know, a lot of B and C Westerns, Roy Rogers, that you know, Gene Autry, those kind of things, and he wrote the great score for one John Wayne movie which was called Wake of the Red Witch.

Tom Scott 7:44

Anyway, as I was growing up, there was always a room in our house whether it was a converted den or a converted dining room, something where he had his upright piano and a great big draftman's desk and he would be handwriting all these scores.

Tom's Early Musical Background

Tom Scott 8:00

His penmanship was gorgeous, you know, it looked like artwork, and so that was always going on, just kind of a subconscious, you know, accompaniment to my youth. But once I decided to play clarinet in the elementary school orchestra, which I was, I guess, about fourth grade. I guess I must have said I don't remember this exactly, but I must have said something about wanting to play saxophone. I don't remember why, I must have thought something good about it. He said well, of course it was a school orchestra so there were no saxophones. But he said, my father very wisely said, son, you should start on the clarinet because, see, he of course was conducting with all the great studio musicians in town, and I'm sure he had heard or asked or something that among the great woodwind players, two of which became my teachers at various times, you know what to do about this kid who wants to play saxophone? Well, have him play clarinet. So I rented a silver clarinet for $5 for the whole semester. Wow, those days are gone forever, I'm sure yeah.

Alistair Parnell 9:07

You can't buy a reed for that now.

Tom Scott 9:09

And started taking lessons, started taking lessons and my dad, wanting me to to, uh, be influenced by a great clarinet player, bought me a recording that I wore out. It was actually recorded 10 years before I was born by Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, and it was a famous 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. And not only Benny, whose technique and imagination was off the charts, but he had Harry James and Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson, all these great players. And, by the way, just parenthetically, there were very few integrated bands in 1938. He was one of the few. I guess he just said look, if you don't like it, fine, we won't do your gig. You know, when you get that big, I suppose you have a certain amount of clout. And of course I never knew any of that. To me they were just all great musicians. I never thought about color. To this day I still have to be reminded what color or what ethnicity someone is, because I don't care, I mean it's fine, it's all good, anyway, so from the clarinet then, once I got into, they call it middle school now, then it was junior high school. There was a dance band. They called it dance band. We would call it jazz band today big band, and it was an opening in the baritone sax chair, and so I yes, we have a volunteer over here and so I lugged that thing back and forth from school. It was a school horn. My dad once again wanted to give me the best music education possible, bought me my first I guess we call it my first modern jazz record, which was called Gets Meets Mulligan in Hi-Fi. Ah yeah, an album where actually one side of the record they switch horns. Yes, yeah, I know it, and frankly I think they both sound better on their own horns but that's just an aside.

Tom Scott 11:04

But anyway, I wore that one out and became enamored with, of course, Gerry Mulligan being a very sax player that I was at the time and his pianist quartet with horn players like Bob Brookmeyer and Chet Baker and Art Farmer and others. That whole idea of implying harmony without a chord instrument, you know doing it all with. You know, just like Bach, two-part inventions, you know the harmony is up to the single eyes that the horns play.

Tom Scott 11:29

So all of that was going on. And then later I took up the tenor and the alto and you know, by the age of 14, I was playing $15 jobs at a country, Deauville Country Club in Reseda, California, playing for weddings and bar mitzvahs and stuff. And of course here's a funny thing, cause at the time I was sort of an elitist jazz guy. You know, by that time I was into Coltrane and Cannonball and everything. And here I am having to play. I want some red roses for a blue lady, you know, and and Hava Hana nagila gila, you know a lot of bar mitzvahs and weddings and stuff, and you know what? The best lesson I learned doing that was well, wait, I'm, I'm being paid to make these people happy and so they can dance. Yeah, um, there's only 12 notes and and don't don't try to insert your own personal opinion about how you feel about a certain tune. Just play the damn thing with as much feeling as you can muster. That's your job and that was a great education right there. Sure, sure I could play Happy Birthday or Mary had a Little Lamb and imbue all of them with a certain amount of feeling because of the lessons I learned back then.

Alistair Parnell 12:51

So yeah, so you started your career, really started playing jazz in groups and doing gigs and stuff.

Tom Scott 12:58

In my room to begin with with a Music Minus One record, yeah, but slowly, yes, that's true.

Alistair Parnell 13:04

And then how did the transition into? You kind of made a transition then into more session work then. Was that the next step for you?

Tom Scott 13:12

Well, a couple of things happened kind of simultaneously. The first thing that happened was yes, I did. I remember the first recording session that I remember being on as a sideman was by a group called oh man, I can't remember their name right now, but they did a cover version of the 59th Street Bridge song. I know, yep, yep, come on, you move too fast and they'd had a hit with that. This was an attempt to follow up with a hit success they'd had on that tune, and actually Leon Russell was a piano player on this session. I remember that before he was known for you know what he became known for later? Anyways, a room full of musicians that I barely knew, and I was just thrilled to be there at all, and so that's what started it, and I was maybe 18, maybe 19. But then a really big thing happened, which was that I was asked to sub on the second or third night of a week engagement with Oliver Nelson's big band at a club in LA called Marnie's on the Hill. At the end of that week or two weeks, whatever, it was Bob Thiel who was one of my jazz idols because of Impulse Records. He was the guy. He was Impulse Records at that time he was going to come out with a remote truck and record the big band for an Oliver Nelson live album, live in Los Angeles. It was called and so I went to sub for the guy who was sick and Oliver said you got the gig. So I was the first chair tenor player for that week and a half, I guess it was, and I had a feature solo on Milestones for that week and a half, I guess it was, and I had a feature solo on Milestones. First we tried with Frank Strozier, who was a marvelous, very underrated alto player. I thought very interesting style of soloing, Kind of a little more outside than I was, you know, a little more that way, but I just loved it. I thought it was great. Anyway, we would trade for a while and then I had a long feature solo and anyway, at the end of this thing we recorded obviously the last two nights, I guess it was.

Tom Scott 15:23

And I'm putting my horn away and Bob Field comes up to me and says hey, kid, you want to make an album for Impulse. And I was shocked and surprised and flabbergasted. To tell you the truth, I almost thought is he talking to me? Is there somebody else behind me. But I said Mr Thiel, I would love to, and so he thought that possibly he could make a kind of a pop music tenor saxophone player out of me.

Tom Scott 15:53

So he crafted a recording, which there were like three of, of hollywood uh pop arrangers guy named Al Capps, um, I can't remember all their names, but anyway they were kind of the hit hit arrangers of that day and a bunch of pop singers, background singers for that day, and a band of some guys who it was kind of of the tail end of the Wrecking Crew era, but we had, I think Jim Gordon played drums, I think Mike Melvin on keyboards, Glen Campbell played rhythm guitar because he hadn't hit yet and he was a really good rhythm guitar player, and people like that. Carol Kaye played Fender bass and Emil Richards on percussion. Anyway, kind of the cream of the LA studio crowd. And I was basically reading these parts that they put in front of me. It was kind of the hits of the hour.

Studio Career and Film Scoring

Tom Scott 16:48

We did Donovan's Mellow Yellow and Aretha's Baby, I Love You, and Never my Love by the Association and stuff like that. And so apparently I made good with these musicians, because word of mouth travels fast, you know, in that crowd and then I started getting calls to do sessions and at the same time, I was following this career path where now I'm a solo artist, you know. I was following this career path where I now I'm a solo artist, you know so, and also at the same time, uh, a little bit well right around there, I guess. A year or two later, I met Dave Grusin and played with him, along with Howard Roberts. Dave Grusin, of course, one of the great film composers ever yeah yeah, and of course and uh, he, he, he, uh.

Tom Scott 17:36

Let's see. The first one I did was 68, I think he recommended me to write a background score for a dramatic show. Now, in those days there was an outfit called Quinn Martin Productions and they really dominated primetime television with their cop shows. Basically they were, you know, get the bad guys shows and uh, the. The one, the one that I wrote my first uh background score for, was called Dan August and it starred a then unknown actor named Burt Reynolds and uh, and it was as good a cop show as any, I thought, but it only for some reason, the, the ratings weren't enough and so it went off the air. But that sort of started me. I became part of the Quinn Martin rotating composers group and so during that same time as I was doing sessions as a player, I was writing music for shows like well Baretta. I did for two and a half years, of course. I wrote the theme for Starsky and Hutch, but before that, Barnaby Jones, canon and Streets of San Francisco. I did various episodes of all three of those at one time or another.

Tom Scott 18:49

So, and then of course let's jump to how the Winsett thing happened. I had done a record with Joni Mitchell by myself. That led to her asking me if my band, which by that time was the LA Express, accompany herself and sing either guitar or piano and then bring a bass player in and send him home, and bring in a drummer and send him home. That's the way. Piecemeal like that, she never recorded all it was. So my band, which at that time was Larry Carton, Joe Sample, Max Bennett, John Guerin and myself went in the studio to record what became the album Court and Spark, and we ended up doing a a tour with her. Unfortunately we lost Joe, Larry Carlton and Joe Sample, because just about at the time joe was saying I'm going to quit The Crusaders, The Jazz Crusaders, which became The Crusaders which he's in, since he was a kid really, with his all those Houston buddies. He suddenly they brought Larry in to do the album, this album which was going to be his swan song, and they had a hit with a tune called Put It When You Want It, and so they wanted to do that, so they left. So I replaced them with Robin Ford and originally Roger Kelleway on keyboards and then later a guy named Larry Nash.

Tom Scott 20:16

But anyway, that group went on tour with Joni for nine months in 1974, which, because of the success of Court and Spark, just mushroomed into. We were playing college theaters 500, 600, 700 seats Great love that. But by the summertime we were playing arenas seats, you know, great love that, but by the summertime we were playing arenas, culminating in, uh, September October I think it was September October Wembley stadium with the band Jesse Cole and Young. God. Who else is on that thing? I, you know, just an all-star assemblage Joni Mitchell and Tom Scott, the LA Express at Wembley stadium for a hundred thousand people

Matt Traum 20:55

Wow, so you went from right from high school to professional playing. How did you learn how to?

Tom Scott 21:00

More or less. Well, see, I also. That was the height of the Vietnam War, and so I was very lucky that in the actually the end of my 11th grade year, a guy came to me a musician I knew. Actually, he was older than me but he'd gone to my school and he said listen, there's a band in Van Nuys, California, it's the Air National Guard, which is the National Guard unit of the Air Force, and it's a six-year hitch. You've got to go to a meeting once a month and then two weeks in the summer, but if you do that, you will fulfill your military requirement. You can continue on in school, you know, and they won't pluck you out.

Tom Scott 21:40

You know the only reason that would prevent you from being drafted in those days, before they had that numerate. This is before they have the number system or the big tumbler with the numbers and they'd pick them out. This is before all that that. So you either had to have a full college load or, you know, prove yourself to be physically unfit one way or another, physically or sexually or psychologically. And there were guys who made, went to great pains to uh, to put on an act, to uh get out of the draft show, some successfully, some not, and some moved to Canada. It was a real bad scene but anyway I got in that. So as I was fulfilling, I was in there until I did a whole year of high school, basically in street clothes, because the reason for this was we're getting off the subject here, but this is interesting.

Tom Scott 22:35

The reason that was was we're getting off the subject here, but this is it. The reason that was was because the Vietnam Nam war was keeping the air force training center which was in Lackland uh, Texas, it was so busy. There were no, there was no room in basic training for people, for National Guard people like Air National Guard people like me. So, uh, I just kept going, kept going to school. I got, I got did and, you know, I graduated and, as I say, I was going to the meetings to street clothes because they didn't have a uniform for me. So I got my first of six years out of the way, before I even had to go to basic training. But I had to do all that. And then I went back to. I went to USC for a semester.

Tom Scott 23:14

I was very unhappy with that because, basically because I was prepared to do all the music stuff from the beginning, one oh everything, 101, whatever. But I had the audacity to say to the guy as, uh, listen, I, I, you know, I've I've been writing and I've had my own bands and stuff and I've been composing original material. Is there a way maybe I could form a group, maybe in you know, if there's a classroom that has some down time and maybe put together a you know ensemble of my own. And he looks at me and goes, well, uh, maybe when you're a senior or a graduate student? And I found that, if you could imagine, quite off-putting.

Tom Scott 23:53

Yes, so I went there as I did some basic philosophy, logic, some stuff like that, but then just blew it off and I enrolled at UCLA the following September. I thought, well, I'll get a degree to fall back on. And so I thought, well, I'll try psychology. And I went there one day and said I don't want to do this, I just don't want to do this. I want to do music right now. Yeah, so I was. That's when I started working a full time and so some getting to the Winsett thing.

Tom Scott 24:35

So we were, were on, as I said, in '74, we were on tour all over the United States and I remember buying somewhere and opening a copy of Downbeat magazine and in there was I think an eighth of a page, quarter page ad with a picture of this thing, this silver thing, and a box behind it, you know. Then it said Lyricon. I forget what the exact ad said, but clearly it was some kind of wind instrument and I was very curious. So I just got the number of. I can't remember the name of the company that made Lyricon.

Matt Traum 25:11

Computone

Tom Scott 25:12

Computone, thank you. I got the number of Computone and called them up and said Hi, I'm Tom Scott, I'm a saxophone player, I'm on the road with Joni Mitchell. I saw your ad, what is that thing? And so he began to describe it and, as it turned out, we were. He was out about I don't know, 45 minutes outside of Boston, where the CompuTone factory was.

Matt Traum 25:33

Bill Bernardi, I think you're talking to right?

Discovering the Lyricon Wind Controller

Tom Scott 25:35

Bill Bernardi exactly. So we did our Boston concert and then we had a day off, so they drove me out to the factory and I played a Lyric on and I thought, well, this is great, cool. And I got one and stuck with it for a long time. I went from the original one, which had its own sound, its own tone, to I got the one that I really liked the most was the driver, because I was using the Lyric on Wind Driver plugging into an old Moog Model 12, which was a great big box thing, uh, and I would. But I had the simplest setting whatsoever. I went into an oscillator, into into a filter, into an amplifier and out, and just I would dick around with and it was a sine wave and I would dick around with a filter and find it, and that thing had great filters. I gotta say the construction of those filters was I've never heard anything quite that's got that particular sound. Close. We've gotten close. And, Matt, we've gotten close and, Matt, you've gotten very close with, uh, with designing that sound for me.

Matt Traum 26:41

Thank you. Too Hip For The Room, right?

Alistair Parnell 26:51

Yeah, okay, why don't we have a quick listen to a couple of those early recordings things that have got a little bit of Lyric on, and yeah, let's see what we've got in our library of sounds?

Speaker 4 27:18

I've seen your picture, your name in lights above it. This is your big debut. It's like a dream come true. It sounds like Rick Marotta on drums. Is that Rick Marotta?

Matt Traum 27:36

I think it is.

Tom Scott 27:37

It sure sounds like him.

Alistair Parnell 27:39

So just can you explain to us a little bit of what you've got on that Tom, in terms of what you're playing there? You've got some Lyricon going on there?

Tom Scott 27:48

Yes, yeah, that's the Lyricon Wind Driver, I believe. Yeah, yeah, and I was just playing that little intro there. I think it might have been doubled with something, I don't remember, some synth of Donald's, but yeah, that was the Lyricon. I'm trying to remember what other Lyricon I played on that record. But anyway, I will tell you this that Walter and Donald were very open to anything I wanted to try, so I introduced that record and, uh, they were very, very responsive to it. They liked it.

Matt Traum 28:26

Yeah, and of course you did lots of horn arrangements on that famous record and we could play a couple little clips of that possibly. Like I said in the intro there, those are just masterpieces of horn arranging, so clean and tasteful and that makes the tracks I. I really have to compliment you on that.

Tom Scott 28:43

Well, thank you. I will tell you this that, uh, when I had the meeting with the two of them, uh, the only input they really gave me was we don't like high trumpets, so don't do any of that, right, fine, yeah and I think we settled on four saxes, two trombones, two trumpets, something like that.

Tom Scott 29:41

I always think of Deacon Blues as a good example. So I got all these horns. Right? Now I see the first chord of the verse of Deacon Blues and it's E, minor over G, so that's like three notes. There's a G on the bottom, a B and an E and it's E minor over G, so that's like three notes. There's a G on the bottom, a B and an E. I got seven horns.

Tom Scott 30:04

So, okay, I'm going to write this like it's an Oliver Nelson arrangement. I'm going to make it real thick and fat and fill in a lot of notes which are implied but not there. But we're going gonna play them. Yeah, yeah, so that g with an e and a b became a g 13 and they were like a right. I put an f and an a and a, I don't know, just filled it out, yeah, and and I did that as much as I thought necessary on these tunes, not knowing whether they would like it or not.

Tom Scott 30:38

You know they always had a great, a great, a notorious reputation for you know, going through a lot of drummers and bass players and guitarists to find the right, whatever they were looking for, and there were a lot of great ones on that list. I used to say that the street outside of that studio was lined end-to-end with drummers, bass players and guitar players who didn't make the cut Good ones, but I was lucky. I went in on a Monday, we had four nights of recording, went in with my horn players and we started in and they accepted everything I did. The only thing that I had to redo was the fact that it was Deacon Blues because, unbeknownst to me, between the time that they gave me the tape to work with and that session, they had brought in Pete Christleib, who played a great solo on Deacon Blues, but so I had written something that no longer fit with that solo, so I had to rewrite that. Everything else was pretty much as as it was, so I was very grateful for that. We got the whole thing six or seven tunes, whatever it was in in four nights.

Matt Traum 31:53

Wow, Alistair, would you agree with me when it's like, when I listen to those great songs, they're great songs, but I'm waiting for the horns. You know, like Josie, you know, you know those lines at the end it's like that's, that's the, the sugar, you know. Oh, it's great, that's what you're waiting for. Oh man, yeah.

Speaker 4 32:16

Yeah, absolutely.

Tom Scott 32:18

I'm your sugar man, baby.

Speaker 4 32:20

You are man. Great stuff.

Alistair Parnell 32:23

So in terms of kind of, perhaps something that has, if you like, a little bit more of a kind of solo distinctive sound. We're not far off. The Captain and Tennille historically now, is that right?

Tom Scott 32:35

If you say so. I don't remember the date, but.

Alistair Parnell 32:37

Well, of course, because this is like '79, I think, okay, somewhere around there, and I mean, for me this is something that surely everybody will recognise, and this was very much a very clear solo Lyric on.

Tom Scott 32:50

It was indeed.

Alistair Parnell 32:50

A little line, right. Let's have a little listen. Maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that, okay.

Tom Scott 33:15

What I'm ad libbing? I'm starting to ad lib now.

Alistair Parnell 33:43

Yeah, beautiful, lovely stuff, love it. So how did that come about? Was that line written for you or did you just improvise that mostly?

Tom Scott 33:52

That was not written for me. They played me the track, by the way. Uh, Toni Tennille was such a sweetie I. I think I had a crush on her.

Matt Traum 34:02

Who didn't?

Tom Scott 34:03

Yeah, in fact I'm sure I did, yeah, but then then there's the Captain, very stoic, he, he was an odd duck I never quite figured, could figure him out. He was uh, he never didn't say much, um, but obviously he contributed a lot to their music and that's fine. But uh, she was the one that I did. I communicated with uh through most of that session and I may have started on the flute, but I get you know sometimes that what would happen is I'd have everything with me because, yeah, being a woodwind player in those days, I had a big trunk in my car in which I carried baritone, sax, tenor, sax, alto sax, soprano sax, alto, flute, flute, bass, flute, clarinet, bass, clarinet. You know all this stuff. That was part of our artillery as a studio woodwind player.

Tom Scott 34:52

So I think I heard and listened to the, the track, what they wanted me to play, it, and said I think I have something that you might like, and you know it's always trial and error with everything, you never know. I could have played a couple of things that said, no, we don't want that, but they didn't, they liked it, yeah. So, yeah, I just developed a solo, I think I. I had to run it a few times, because it has a modulation at the end. So I had to figure out how to weave most fluidly into that and that was it. You know, I was out of there in probably an hour or two at the most.

Alistair Parnell 35:25

Now I don't know much about the Lyricon, I'm afraid to say, but the things I noticed kind of a little bit technically there. I mean, did the Lyricon actually have a pitch, a bite sensor?

Tom Scott 35:36

Yes.

Alistair Parnell 35:37

Or it did.

Famous Lyricon Recordings

Tom Scott 35:37

Yes, it did. Yes, yes, yes, okay, yes, it did. I didn't use it on that sound, of course, because I didn't. I don't think I bent on that sound.

Alistair Parnell 35:48

There's just one tiny little bend in that, solo Just one.

Tom Scott 35:51

Is there a bend in there? Yeah, I had it set probably to a quarter tone lower or something. Yeah, or I had it set probably to a quarter tone lower or something, or no, I know what it was. I sort of had a universal bite that actually was the in-tune pitch, and then if I relaxed it, the pitch would go right. Right, there's never an instant where I wanted to bend a note up you know, always down.

Alistair Parnell 36:15

Yeah, absolutely yeah. But I notice quite often the way you're playing. You'll go for more of a kind of little finger grace note, if you like, rather than scooping all over the place which sounds so much more kind of.

Tom Scott 36:30

Yeah, that can get very ugly quickly. No, all these things have to be used judiciously.

Alistair Parnell 36:35

Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, but I just wonder whether that's one of the very earliest examples of a kind of hit song like that that has a very clear Lyric on solo. I imagine it's probably one of the earliest right.

Tom Scott 36:49

I think you could make that case. So one of the solos that I played on a tune that became a hit was by Dan Fogelberg, a tune called Heart Hotels, and again there was a long middle section. He didn't tell me what to do and I chose a more aggressive tone for this thing because that was a real rock and roll track, you know, with uh all the bells and whistles that would that would entail, and so I, I, you know it's more trebly, it's got, it's uh, more of a I don't know how you describe it, but it's just not. There's nothing mellow about it, it's kind of in your face sound.

Alistair Parnell 37:34

Yeah it's gonna it's gonna cut through a little bit more right, good cuts yeah, yeah, yeah let's have a listen. Well, there's too many windows. Oh, it's great. It's great, it's perfect.

Tom Scott 38:10

Oh fantastic. I saw a funny cartoon, whether it was the Simpsons or whatever it was. It was saying you know, those guys who play jazz, they just make it all up. And that is exactly correct. He's correct, yeah that's great.

Matt Traum 38:28

So we mentioned four tracks that were kind of the early Lyricon solos and the last one that I think we had was Billie Jean, of course, 1983. So that's another one that you did on one of your TikTok videos, which are really cool, by the way. Folks should check them out on TikTok.

Tom Scott 38:44

Well, they've also been. We've transferred them over to Instagram.

Alistair Parnell 38:49

Oh.

Matt Traum 38:49

Instagram.

Alistair Parnell 38:51

That's where.

Matt Traum 38:52

I see it and.

Alistair Parnell 38:52

Facebook.

Tom Scott 38:53

Yeah, they're on all those platforms.

Matt Traum 38:55

I forget where I saw it.

Tom Scott 38:56

We're in the process of transferring them over, so they're in all these places.

Alistair Parnell 39:02

And another very famous line right On the Billie Jean, yeah?

Matt Traum 39:06

If it's okay with Tom, can we play the Instagram version of it?

Tom Scott 39:10

Of course you can, of course.

Tom Scott 39:27

Yeah, that was really me. I'm Tom Scott. I got a call from my dear friend Quincy Jones to play on his latest Michael Jackson production, which was called Thriller. He wanted to add some last-minute ear candy, as we like to call it, to one of his songs. The song turned out to be Billie Jean. Quincy liked my wind synthesizer, which was called the Lyricon, and he wanted me to use it for these little additions. As you can see from the ad, I looked a little different in those days. Anyway, when I arrived at the studio I met Michael Jackson briefly dressed in his military costume, but then he vanished once I started recording and I never saw him again. After that I no longer own a Lyricon, so in the TikTok video I'm simulating it with the latest advancement in wind synthesizers, the Roland Aerophone Pro Aerophone Pro. As you can imagine, the technology has improved dramatically in 45 years and the Aerophone has greatly expanded the creative possibilities for wind instrument players like me. Take that.

Matt Traum 40:26

There you go.

Tom Scott 40:27

Yeah.

Matt Traum 40:29

What a beautiful endorsement for the Aerophone. It's great.

Tom Scott 40:31

Well, I thought, while I'm at it, since they've been very nice about it, I thought I'd plug it where I can.

Matt Traum 40:37

Let's talk a little bit about the timeline then. I think you mentioned about you kind of got into the Yamaha at one point. I did After the Lyricon For several years, the Yamaha system. That's right, that's right, and you seem to have gotten along well with that too. I did Any comments.

Tom Scott 40:55

I did, yeah, and in fact I played it for a while through your little module that were that you had done all the sounds for what was that thing called

Matt Traum 41:03

The Yamaha VL70 with the TURBO chip in it? Yeah.

Tom Scott 41:06

VL70-m or something. Is that right?

Matt Traum 41:08

Yeah, right, exactly, yep, uh, so we should talk about the Virtual Big Band 1997 at the NAMM show out in Anaheim. You were the lead alto in that group. I have a little clip of that and it's your composition. I think it was uh, uh. What's the title here, Gettin' Up?

Tom Scott 41:22

Is this the all all? Is this the all WX thing. I did it yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Traum 41:27

So for folks, that don't know, in 1997 Yamaha was promoting the VL70 and the WX11 I think at the time that was the current WX and so they had a big band they'd put together with 10 wind controller players. Nine of them were on WX11s with a VL70 behind them and a speaker behind their head, so the sound was coming right from their chair and they had Steve Gadd on drums and it was ridiculous and I was there and we have some recording. There's a little clip of it, maybe we can listen to that. It sounds like a big band and remember, this is all electronic, everything, even the guitars and the drums. I think Steve Gadd was playing electronic drums on this.

Tom Scott 42:04

I think you're right. I think you're right. Yeah.

Alistair Parnell 42:07

Here it comes.

Matt Traum 43:33

Thank you, yeah, so the idea with that whole concert was to show how nice wind controllers can sound when each track is played individually and you're not playing eight parts at once. With one key of a keyboard You've got vibratos and bends and timings and breath levels. Everything's individual.

Tom Scott 43:51

Just like actual musicians playing together. I know it's an odd concept.

Matt Traum 43:56

And I think it works. You know, that sounds pretty good to me. I think it's an odd concept, but, and I think it works.

Virtual Big Band and Yamaha WX Era

Tom Scott 44:01

I think it sounded really good. I'd forgotten about it. I've lost that arrangement a long time ago. I don't know where it is, but it sounded good.

Matt Traum 44:09

I can point you to a website that I have up there. If you've got Patchman Music, google NAMM Show, Virtual Big Band. Yeah, I know your website and then Eric Klein did a recording of it on his website. He's got all the audio. If you want to go check out the entire concert, he has the sound.

Tom Scott 44:24

Who has it?

Matt Traum 44:25

Eric Klein. Eric Klein, also known as RoboSax, I can send you the links,

Tom Scott 44:30

Oh, please, if you would.

Matt Traum 44:32

Yeah, it's interesting to listen to. Yeah, there's some jams up there that you did with just you and Steve Gadd at the beginning of the concert

Tom Scott 44:40

Is that right.

Matt Traum 44:41

Electronic drums and wind controller.

Tom Scott 44:43

Oh my God, what fun, Stevie.

Matt Traum 44:45

Good stuff.

Alistair Parnell 44:47

So you stayed on the Yamaha WX for quite a long time, really like 15 years by the look of the timeline you sent us,

Tom Scott 44:54

I think so yeah, I think so.

Alistair Parnell 44:56

And you played the VL70-m solely with that, or did you go into other bits of kit?

Tom Scott 45:02

I, you know what this is. This is where it gets hazy. I don't remember exactly.

Alistair Parnell 45:06

There's a lot going on,

Tom Scott 45:07

Was it a MIDI out. Did that have a MIDI the, the WX ones or?

Matt Traum 45:12

WX11 and the five both had those special WX outputs and you just plug it straight into the VL70-m and then there's MIDI.

Tom Scott 45:19

Yeah, but so was that the only way to, was it also, could you plug it into a, like another sound module of another kind?

Matt Traum 45:26

Yep through MIDI, yep.

Tom Scott 45:28

Through MIDI. Okay, I couldn't remember right, right, right right. So, yeah, I use the VL70-m, I think a great deal of time I may have used something else, but it's all fog at this point.

Matt Traum 45:45

Alistair, we have a track "Never Too Far From You from the Newfound Freedom album that you did in 2002. So I think that has some TurboVL. There's a sound called Toots, it's a harmonica and I think you used it for that track isn't it, I bet it probably.

Tom Scott 45:59

I bet that's true. Sure.

Alistair Parnell 46:01

Let's have a quick listen.

Matt Traum 47:05

Tom, you'd make a kazoo sound great. I mean amazing. Your control and vibrato and bending and breath. It's just masterful, wow.

Tom Scott 47:14

Well, thanks. Thanks.

Alistair Parnell 47:17

I mean, if I can kind of jump in now, because for me, tom, so I you know right around what was it? '87, '88? I was just coming to the end of my time in the kind of Royal College of Music in London as a classical saxophone player. That was my background.

Tom Scott 47:34

Da, da, da da da, da, exactly, Mr Jacques Ibert.

Alistair Parnell 47:37

Yes, they once gave me that to sight read. Yeah, they once gave me that to sight read in one of my exams. Anyway, I'd also bought myself a little mini CD player, right, I thought I was really cool because I got this CD player and this was amazing. Sure, and my earliest CDs there were three, I think. I bought a Dave Grusin album, there was a Lee Ritenour album and there was your Flashpoint, right. So I kind of played those to death because they were just like my three top albums and I just listened to them for like endless time.

Alistair Parnell 48:27

But fairly close to that time I was also into people like Christopher Cross and I discovered that there was some kind of you know Wind synth on a couple of those tracks. I believe actually Judd Miller did one of the tracks with him on that, but you did this little extract on one of his tracks called Alibi and this to me was just such a beautiful little solo. So I want us to kind of have a quick listen to this now Do you remember much about that session.

Tom Scott 49:29

No, it's quite lovely. You know, I must say something, one thing about playing these solos. The temptation for a young player who's given here's an eight-bar solo, the temptation is to want to play everything they've ever learned, and more.

Alistair Parnell 49:49

Yes!

Tom Scott 49:49

And what I've learned over. I mean, it's still. It's funny, I'll be 77 in May and it's still. I've got to remind myself that less is more very often, and in that case, that particular solo is a really good example of that, because when I stop playing, there's some lovely things that happen in there and it makes the solo better. You know now you're waiting for me to. What's he going to do now?

Tom Scott 50:17

I remember Will Lee years ago said listen, there's a bass player I want you to hear and, and he sent me a CD of this, at that time Mexican pop singer named Elvis Crespo, and he had a bass player and the thing was and so it was like a hot Latin thing, just good to get it right, and the bass player is going to do, do dick. So you're just, you found yourself just drawn to what's the bass player going to play next? Yes, because all the other stuff is going on constantly. Yeah, but the one most interesting thing is the guy who's playing the least, right? I thought that was a very good lesson.

Matt Traum 51:01

The irony yeah, yeah, yeah play less.

Alistair Parnell 51:04

The other thing about those, those solos that you're doing, Tom, is, um, you know, obviously there's an incredible mountain of expression going on, which is, you know, just that's what the whole wind synth thing allows you to do, right, but we say this quite often on this podcast as well. There's just you just could not do that on a keyboard instrument. You just couldn't get amount of nuance and shade on a keyboard.

Tom Scott 51:29

Well, I dare anybody to try. You know what I mean. I haven't heard it yet?

Alistair Parnell 51:33

No, absolutely. And so for me and for people that know the sound of a wind synth, we kind of know that's got to be a wind synthesizer, because you can't do that on a keyboard.

Tom Scott 51:42

It's very distinct, it's right.

Alistair Parnell 51:47

I mean, you know keyboards can do other amazing things, but in terms of the expressive sound, that's got to be a wind synth. It's just lovely. That's on my desert island discs. I explained that to Matt the other day. You know, in terms of some of my top, what would I do if I had those five choices on a desert island? That would be one of my tracks. It's beautiful.

Tom Scott 52:07

Very good.

Alistair Parnell 52:11

So this is being a fascinating episode and for now I'm going to say thank you so much to our regular co-host, Matt Traum, and particularly, once again, huge thanks to Tom Scott for a fascinating interview.

Matt Traum 52:26

Thanks, Tom.

Tom Scott 52:27

Thank you guys, thank you.

Alistair Parnell 52:29

What we're going to do is we're going to return to our second part of our Tom Scott interview for podcast number 14. So please join us then. See you next time.